Film

Using a mix of archive news footage, home movies and Sebastian’s own narration, the film was meant to be a humble and personal portrayal of Columbia’s political history.

“Snyder’s signature grimy, gothic aesthetic is ever present, as the girls bend time and space to encounter demon samurai, Steampunk-zombie-soldiers, Orcs, dragons, and futuristic alien-robots.”

So, the Narnia saga is set to continue with no particular order, and no-one particularly caring. With the announcement of The Magician’s Nephew, Adam Deane ponders the brief life and extended death of the franchise.

“Almost everyone (including the men) were wearing corsets or fishnets of some description.”

“They encounter a series of haphazard characters, some friendlier than others, but each with a set of psychological issues that remind the audience of the real plight of our protagonists.”

Picture the scene: It’s 10.30pm on a Saturday night and I am surrounded by glitter, false eyelashes and the distinct smell of hairspray; as a marvelously glamorous sequin-clad drag queen takes to the stage, welcomed by the rejoicing roar of an eclectic crowd of bourgeoisie zombies and blood-splattered doctors. One might be excused for assuming that what I am describing is a nightmarish Halloween night on Canal Street, that, however, is not the case.

Cheesier than cheddar, the old ballet-meets-hip hop story is given a new edge on the sparkling London backdrop. Granted, it’s not quite as glamorous as the Step-Up franchise, but a subtle British influence, (from Union Jack t-shirts to the music featured), adds a certain charm.

Taking its inspiration from Marks’ 1996 autobiography of the same name, Mr Nice is unsurprisingly reverential and seems reluctant to ask any real questions of its protagonist. Most crucially, by presenting Marks as ‘Mr Nice’, the film fails to explore the moral dilemma inherent to his profession. Instead, Rose’s script opts for a rather shallow pro-legalisation, pro-Marks stance which ultimately suggests, to quote one glib piece of dialogue, that ‘it’s the law that’s wrong’.

It reminded me of Brick in that she spends most of the film finding things out. Just going door to door, piecing stuff together. The gruff, mumbling neighbours she demands information from have an untrustworthy air about them, but despite feeling like a borderline horror, it’s more of a slow-moving dramatic detective movie. There isn’t really anything like it.

Zuckerberg came up with the notion at Harvard and launched the primitive website from his dorm room. Weird to think; that something that has become a scarily large part of everyday life for 500 million people, was started in what a lot of first years are experiencing now: a room where old beer cans used as ashtrays are literally heavy with cigarette butts, where old orange skins cling to the bottom of waste paper baskets and where blackish grime and bits of indefinable matter stick to an unwashed bowl on your desk. Maybe it’s different at Harvard, but it’s still a fairly novel (if disgusting) notion.

1) City of Angels – Nicolas Cage plays an angel who falls in love with Meg Ryan. It actually sounds a bit comical. Trust me, it isn’t. The bicycle scene, combined with Sara McLachlan’s ‘In the Arms an Angel’ is the most depressing thing that you’ll ever see. Or hear.

2) Beauty and the Beast – A tale as old as time, a song as old a rhyme – it gets me every time.

‘Anatomically correct blow up sex doll’ and ‘heart rending tearjerker’ aren’t usually phrases that appear in the same sentence. This film, however, somehow manages to seamlessly entwine the two and sit them together as naturally as emos and Twilight.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel of the same name reads like a film, so it seems completely logical to copy and paste the story onto the big screen. Time Magazine might have gone a bit off the rails calling it ‘the best book of the decade’, but it’s definitely film worthy.

The original 1930s King Kong is an hour and a half, and even that feels like it’s dragging in some places. It’s a very thin concept; a giant monkey on an island. You certainly wouldn’t have thought that it needs to be three hours. Apparently Peter ‘I’m not going to edit any of my films’ Jackson thought otherwise.

Many of you out there will believe, as I do, that awarding a piece of work three stars is highly frustrating. This magic number is inoffensive, uninspiring and tells the reader nothing of the subject matter. However, The Town may just be the exception; it conjures up enough brilliant moments and frustrating plot devices to be truly worthy of an average review.

In typical Burton style, stripy socks, unnervingly twisted flash-backs, and Helena Bonham Carter are in abundance; (no one could mistake this for any other director), and Tim makes the almost unforgivable mistake of detailing the ending at the start of the film.

5. Lord of the Rings – ‘I’m no man’
So says Elf-girl Eowyn as she thrusts her blade in the Witch King’s face. I tend to think that the Witch King, when he said that ‘no man could kill him’, meant Man: the race and not Man: a male. Either he didn’t recognise female prowess or he didn’t foresee being stabbed in the head when he made this claim.

Since John Cusack made his name as the face of the 1980s teen rom-com, it is fitting that Grosse Point Blank is, at its heart, a high school movie. Martin Blank, (Cusack), is a hit man facing something of a midlife crisis; he has recurring dreams of his prom night sweetheart; he no longer derives satisfaction from his job; and he’s being pressured to join a union (yes, apparently professional killers have those), led by union chief Dan Aykroyd.

Michael Bay spent so long working on the optical madness that is Transformers 2 that he forgot to develop his storyline or characters. The end result is CGI on steroids and very little else. It’s always a bad sign when you feel genuinely embarrassed for the actors in the film for having their names permanently besmirched by such an atrocity. The cast and crew behind this film would probably be happy if there was a nuclear holocaust, something to wipe out civilization, as this would finally erase their shame.

An unfair rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a couple of overly-harsh critiques, means that this movie is one that rarely appears on the student radar. However, it is, in my opinion, arguably one of the most entertaining and interesting ‘superhero’ films in a long time.